In a recent interview with Ad Age, WWE’s Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon discussed the company getting creative with cinematic matches since the WrestleMania 36 pay-per-view and revealed that Metallica were originally scheduled to perform as part of WrestleMania 36.

“I think it’s opportunity, I think in this current environment, everyone is in the same boat, so I think our audiences are willing to allow us to experiment a little bit as sports leagues, as brands and as entertainment. I think it gives them, actually, a voice and to be part of the process, to empower them to give them the feedback that we need on what’s working and what’s not working, on what they like and what they don’t like.

It really is opportunity across the board, it’s forcing innovation and innovation is critical in today’s world. It always has been, especially now during COVID. From a content perspective, it has actually changed the way that we present some of our content, we’ve experimented with what we call cinematic matches. The Undertaker and AJ Styles, at WrestleMania this year, they competed in a Boneyard Match, which was more akin to The Undertaker’s branding, it was like a 20 minute movie sequence and it was cut to Metallica, because Metallica was going to be a part of WrestleMania, their music was going to be a part of The Undertaker’s entrance.

When everything changed, they said, hey look, we still want to be a part of this if we can, we’re not just backing out. We are very thankful to Metallica for helping score that whole sequence, it was so awesome and so well received, so we tried to emulate those matches to provide something different.”

The interview is available in full at this link.